were dulled next morning, and I had some little difficulty in
explaining to Mrs. D’Odd why it was that I hung my boots and spectacles
upon a peg along with my other garments before retiring to rest.
The new hopes excited by the confident manner in which my agent had
undertaken the commission, caused me to rise superior to alcoholic
reaction, and I paced about the rambling corridors and old-fashioned
rooms, picturing to myself the appearance of my expected acquisition,
and deciding what part of the building would harmonize best with its
presence. After much consideration, I pitched upon the banqueting-hall
as being, on the whole, most suitable for its reception. It was a long
low room, hung round with valuable tapestry and interesting relics of
the old family to whom it had belonged. Coats of mail and implements
of war glimmered fitfully as the light of the fire played over them,
and the wind crept under the door, moving the hangings to and fro with
a ghastly rustling. At one end there was the raised dais, on which
in ancient times the host and his guests used to spread their table,
while a descent of a couple of steps led to the lower part of the hall,
where the vassals and retainers held wassail. The floor was uncovered
by any sort of carpet, but a layer of rushes had been scattered over
it by my direction. In the whole room there was nothing to remind one
of the nineteenth century; except, indeed, my own solid silver plate,
stamped with the resuscitated family arms, which was laid out upon an
oak table in the centre. This, I determined, should be the haunted
room, supposing my wife’s cousin to succeed in his negotiation with
the spirit-mongers. There was nothing for it now but to wait patiently
until I heard some news of the result of his inquiries.
A letter came in the course of a few days, which, if it was short,
was at least encouraging. It was scribbled in pencil on the back of
a playbill, and sealed apparently with a tobacco-stopper. “Am on the
track,” it said. “Nothing of the sort to be had from any professional
spiritualist, but picked up a fellow in a pub yesterday who says he can
manage it for you. Will send him down unless you wire to the contrary.
Abrahams is his name, and he has done one or two of these jobs before.”
The letter wound up with some incoherent allusions to a check, and was
signed by my affectionate cousin, John Brocket.
I need hardly say that I did not wire, but awaited the arrival of
Mr. Abrahams with all impatience. In spite of my belief in the
supernatural, I could scarcely credit the fact that any mortal could
have such a command over the spirit-world as to deal in them and barter
them against mere earthly gold. Still, I had Jack’s word for it that
such a trade existed; and here was a gentleman with a Judaical name
ready to demonstrate it by proof positive. How vulgar and commonplace
Jorrocks’ eighteenth-century ghost would appear should I succeed in
securing a real mediæval apparition! I almost thought that one had
been sent down in advance, for, as I walked round the moat that night
before retiring to rest, I came upon a dark figure engaged in surveying
the machinery of my portcullis and drawbridge. His start of surprise,
however, and the manner in which he hurried off into the darkness,
speedily convinced me of his earthly origin, and I put him down as
some admirer of one of my female retainers mourning over the muddy
Hellespont which divided him from his love. Whoever he may have been,
he disappeared and did not return, though I loitered about for some
time in the hope of catching a glimpse of him and exercising my feudal
rights upon his person.
Jack Brocket was as good as his word. The shades of another evening
were beginning to darken round Goresthorpe Grange, when a peal at the
outer bell, and the sound of a fly pulling up, announced the arrival
of Mr. Abrahams. I hurried down to meet him, half expecting to see a
choice assortment of ghosts crowding in at his rear. Instead, however,
of being the sallow-faced, melancholy-eyed man that I had pictured to
myself, the ghost-dealer was a sturdy little podgy fellow, with a pair
of wonderfully keen sparkling eyes and a mouth which was constantly
stretched in a good-humored, if somewhat artificial, grin. His sole
stock-in-trade seemed to consist of a small leather bag jealously
locked and strapped, which emitted a metallic chink upon being placed
on the stone flags of the hall.
“And ’ow are you, sir?” he asked, wringing my hand with the utmost
effusion. “And the missus, ’ow is she? And all the others--’ow’s all
their ’ealth?”
I intimated that we were all as well as could reasonably be expected,
but Mr. Abrahams happened to catch a glimpse of Mrs. D’Odd in
the distance, and at once plunged at her with another string of
inquiries as to her health, delivered so volubly and with such an
intense earnestness, that I half expected to see him terminate his
cross-examination by feeling her pulse and demanding a sight of her
tongue. All this time his little eyes rolled round and round, shifting
perpetually from the floor to the ceiling, and from the ceiling to the
walls, taking in apparently every article of furniture in a single
comprehensive glance.
Having satisfied himself that neither of us was in a pathological
condition, Mr. Abrahams suffered me to lead him upstairs, where a
repast had been laid out for him to which he did ample justice. The
mysterious little bag he carried along with him, and deposited it under
his chair during the meal. It was not until the table had been cleared
and we were left together that he broached the matter on which he had
come down.
“I hunderstand,” he remarked, puffing at a trichinopoly, “that you want
my ’elp in fitting up this ’ere ’ouse with a happarition.”
I acknowledged the correctness of his surmise, while mentally wondering
at those restless eyes of his, which still danced about the room as if
he were making an inventory of the contents.
“And you won’t find a better man for the job, though I says it as
shouldn’t,” continued my companion. “Wot did I say to the young gent
wot spoke to me in the bar of the Lame Dog? ‘Can you do it?’ says he.
‘Try me,’ says I, ’me and my bag. Just try me.’ I couldn’t say fairer
than that.”
My respect for Jack Brocket’s business capacities began to go up
very considerably. He certainly seemed to have managed the matter
wonderfully well. “You don’t mean to say that you carry ghosts about in
bags?” I remarked, with diffidence.
Mr. Abrahams smiled a smile of superior knowledge. “You wait,” he
said; “give me the right place and the right hour, with a little of
the essence of Lucoptolycus”--here he produced a small bottle from his
waistcoat pocket--“and you won’t find no ghost that I ain’t up to.
You’ll see them yourself, and pick your own, and I can’t say fairer
than that.”
As all Mr. Abrahams’ protestations of fairness were accompanied by a
cunning leer and a wink from one or other of his wicked little eyes,
the impression of candor was somewhat weakened.
“When are you going to do it?” I asked, reverentially.
“Ten minutes to one in the morning,” said Mr. Abrahams, with decision.
“Some says midnight, but I says ten to one, when there ain’t such a
crowd, and you can pick your own ghost. And now,” he continued, rising
to his feet, “suppose you trot me round the premises, and let me see
where you wants it; for there’s some places as attracts ’em, and some
as they won’t hear of--not if there was no other place in the world.”
Mr. Abrahams inspected our corridors and chambers with a most critical
and observant eye, fingering the old tapestry with the air of a
connoisseur, and remarking in an undertone that it would “match
uncommon nice.” It was not until he reached the banqueting-hall,
however, which I had myself picked out, that his admiration reached
the pitch of enthusiasm. “’Ere’s the place!” he shouted, dancing, bag
in hand, round the table on which my plate was lying, and looking not
unlike some quaint little goblin himself. “’Ere’s the place; we won’t
get nothin’ to beat this! A fine room--noble, solid, none of your
electro-plate trash! That’s the way as things ought to be done, sir.
Plenty of room for ’em to glide here. Send up some brandy and the box
of weeds; I’ll sit here by the fire and do the preliminaries, which
is more trouble than you’d think; for them ghosts carries on hawful
at times, before they finds out who they’ve got to deal with. If you
was in the room they’d tear you to pieces as like as not. You leave
me alone to tackle them, and at half-past twelve come in, and I lay
they’ll be quiet enough by then.”
Mr. Abrahams’ request struck me as a reasonable one, so I left him with
his feet upon the mantelpiece, and his chair in front of the fire,
fortifying himself with stimulants against his refractory visitors.
From the room beneath, in which I sat with Mrs. D’Odd, I could hear
that, after sitting for some time, he rose up and paced about the hall
with quick impatient steps. We then heard him try the lock of the door,
and afterward drag some heavy article of furniture in the direction of
the window, on which, apparently, he mounted, for I heard the creaking
of the rusty hinges as the diamond-paned casement folded backward,
and I knew it to be situated several feet above the little man’s
reach. Mrs. D’Odd says that she could distinguish his voice speaking
in low and rapid whispers after this, but that may have been her
imagination. I confess that I began to feel more impressed than I had
deemed it possible to be. There was something awesome in the thought
of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in
from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world. It was with a
trepidation which I could hardly disguise from Matilda that I observed
that the clock was pointing to half-past twelve, and that the time had
come for me to share the vigil of my visitor.
He was sitting in his old position when I entered, and there were no
signs of the mysterious movements which I had overheard, though his
chubby face was flushed as with recent exertion.
“Are you succeeding all right?” I asked as I came in, putting on as
careless an air as possible, but glancing involuntarily round the room
to see if we were alone.
“Only your help is needed to complete the matter,” said Mr. Abrahams,
in a solemn voice. “You shall sit by me and partake of the essence of
Lucoptolycus, which removes the scales from our earthly eyes. Whatever
you may chance to see, speak not and make no movement, lest you break
the spell.” His manner was subdued, and his usual cockney vulgarity had
entirely disappeared. I took the chair which he indicated, and awaited
the result.
My companion cleared the rushes from the floor in our neighborhood,
and, going down upon his hands and knees, described a half-circle with
chalk, which enclosed the fireplace and ourselves. Round the edge of
this half-circle he drew several hieroglyphics, not unlike the signs of
the zodiac. He then stood up and uttered a long invocation, delivered
so rapidly that it sounded like a single gigantic word in some uncouth
guttural language. Having finished this prayer, if prayer it was, he
pulled out the small bottle which he had produced before, and poured a
couple of teaspoonfuls of clear transparent fluid into a phial, which
he handed to me with an intimation that I should drink it.
The liquid had a faintly sweet odor, not unlike the aroma of certain
sorts of apples. I hesitated a moment before applying it to my lips,
but an impatient gesture from my companion overcame my scruples, and I
tossed it off. The taste was not unpleasant; and, as it gave rise to no
immediate effects, I leaned back in my chair and composed myself for
what was to come. Mr. Abrahams seated himself beside me, and I felt
that he was watching my face from time to time, while repeating some
more of the invocations in which he had indulged before.
A sense of delicious warmth and languor began gradually to steal over
me, partly, perhaps, from the heat of the fire, and partly from some
unexplained cause. An uncontrollable impulse to sleep weighed down my
eyelids, while at the same time my brain worked actively, and a hundred
beautiful and pleasing ideas flitted through it. So utterly lethargic
did I feel that, though I was aware that my companion put his hand
over the region of my heart, as if to feel how it were beating, I did
not attempt to prevent him, nor did I even ask him for the reason of
his action. Everything in the room appeared to be reeling slowly round
in a drowsy dance, of which I was the centre. The great elk’s head at
the far end wagged solemnly backward and forward, while the massive
salvers on the tables performed cotillons with the claret-cooler and
the épergne. My head fell upon my breast from sheer heaviness, and I
should have become unconscious had I not been recalled to myself by
the opening of the door at the other end of the hall.
This door led on to the raised dais, which, as I have mentioned, the
heads of the house used to reserve for their own use. As it swung
slowly back upon its hinges, I sat up in my chair, clutching at the
arms, and staring with a horrified glare at the dark passage outside.
Something was coming down it--something unformed and intangible,
but still a _something_. Dim and shadowy, I saw it flit across the
threshold, while a blast of ice-cold air swept down the room, which
seemed to blow through me, chilling my very heart. I was aware of the
mysterious presence, and then I heard it speak in a voice like the
sighing of an east wind among pine-trees on the banks of a desolate sea.
It said: “I am the invisible nonentity. I have affinities and am
subtle. I am electric, magnetic, and spiritualistic. I am the great
ethereal sigh-heaver. I kill dogs. Mortal, wilt thou choose me?”
I was about to speak, but the words seemed to be choked in my throat;
and, before I could get them out, the shadow flitted across the hall
and vanished in the darkness at the other side, while a long-drawn
melancholy sigh quivered through the apartment.
I turned my eyes toward the door once more, and beheld, to my
astonishment, a very small old woman, who hobbled along the corridor
and into the hall. She passed backward and forward several times, and
then, crouching down at the very edge of the circle upon the floor,
she disclosed a face the horrible malignity of which shall never be
banished from my recollection. Every foul passion appeared to have left
its mark upon that hideous countenance.
“Ha! ha!” she screamed, holding out her wizened hands like the talons
of an unclean bird. “You see what I am. I am the fiendish old woman. I
wear snuff-colored silks. My curse descends on people. Sir Walter was
partial to me. Shall I be thine, mortal?”
I endeavored to shake my head in horror; on which she aimed a blow at
me with her crutch, and vanished with an eldritch scream.
By this time my eyes turned naturally toward the open door, and I was
hardly surprised to see a man walk in of tall and noble stature. His
face was deadly pale, but was surmounted by a fringe of dark hair which
fell in ringlets down his back. A short pointed beard covered his chin.
He was dressed in loose-fitting clothes, made apparently of yellow
satin, and a large white ruff surrounded his neck. He paced across the
room with slow and majestic strides. Then turning, he addressed me in a
sweet, exquisitely modulated voice.
“I am the cavalier,” he remarked. “I pierce and am pierced. Here is my
rapier. I clink steel. This is a blood stain over my heart. I can emit
hollow groans. I am patronized by many old Conservative families. I am
the original manor-house apparition. I work alone, or in company with
shrieking damsels.”
He bent his head courteously, as though awaiting my reply, but the same
choking sensation prevented me from speaking; and, with a deep bow, he
disappeared.
He had hardly gone before a feeling of intense horror stole over me,
and I was aware of the presence of a ghastly creature in the room, of
dim outlines and uncertain proportions. One moment it seemed to pervade
the entire apartment, while at another it would become invisible, but
always leaving behind it a distinct consciousness of its presence.
Its voice, when it spoke, was quavering and gusty. It said: “I am
the leaver of footsteps and the spiller of gouts of blood. I tramp
upon corridors. Charles Dickens has alluded to me. I make strange and
disagreeable noises. I snatch letters and place invisible hands on
people’s wrists. I am cheerful. I burst into peals of hideous laughter.
Shall I do one now?” I raised my hand in a deprecating way, but too
late to prevent one discordant outbreak which echoed through the room.
Before I could lower it the apparition was gone.
I turned my head toward the door in time to see a man come hastily and
stealthily into the chamber. He was a sunburnt powerfully built fellow,
with ear-rings in his ears and a Barcelona handkerchief tied loosely
round his neck. His head was bent upon his chest, and his whole aspect
was that of one afflicted by intolerable remorse. He paced rapidly
backward and forward like a caged tiger, and I observed that a drawn
knife glittered in one of his hands, while he grasped what appeared to
be a piece of parchment in the other. His voice, when he spoke, was
deep and sonorous. He said, “I am a murderer. I am a ruffian. I crouch
when I walk. I step noiselessly. I know something of the Spanish Main.
I can do the lost treasure business. I have charts. Am able-bodied and
a good walker. Capable of haunting a large park.” He looked toward me
beseechingly, but before I could make a sign I was paralyzed by the
horrible sight which appeared at the door.
It was a very tall man, if, indeed, it might be called a man, for
the gaunt bones were protruding through the corroding flesh, and the
features were of a leaden hue. A winding-sheet was wrapped round the
figure, and formed a hood over the head, from under the shadow of
which two fiendish eyes, deep set in their grisly sockets, blazed and
sparkled like red-hot coals. The lower jaw had fallen upon the breast,
disclosing a withered, shrivelled tongue and two lines of black and
jagged fangs. I shuddered and drew back as this fearful apparition
advanced to the edge of the circle.
“I am the American blood-curdler,” it said, in a voice which seemed
to come in a hollow murmur from the earth beneath it. “None other is
genuine. I am the embodiment of Edgar Allan Poe. I am circumstantial
and horrible. I am a low-caste spirit-subduing spectre. Observe
my blood and my bones. I am grisly and nauseous. No depending on
artificial aid. Work with grave-clothes, a coffin-lid, and a galvanic
battery. Turn hair white in a night.” The creature stretched out its
fleshless arms to me as if in entreaty, but I shook my head; and it
vanished, leaving a low, sickening, repulsive odor behind it. I sank
back in my chair, so overcome by terror and disgust that I would have
very willingly resigned myself to dispensing with a ghost altogether,
could I have been sure that this was the last of the hideous procession.
A faint sound of trailing garments warned me that it was not so. I
looked up, and beheld a white figure emerging from the corridor into
the light. As it stepped across the threshold I saw that it was that of
a young and beautiful woman dressed in the fashion of a bygone day. Her
hands were clasped in front of her, and her pale proud face bore traces
of passion and of suffering. She crossed the hall with a gentle sound,
like the rustling of autumn leaves, and then, turning her lovely and
unutterably sad eyes upon me, she said,
“I am the plaintive and sentimental, the beautiful and ill-used. I
have been forsaken and betrayed. I shriek in the night-time and glide
down passages. My antecedents are highly respectable and generally
aristocratic. My tastes are æsthetic. Old oak furniture like this would
do, with a few more coats of mail and plenty of tapestry. Will you not
take me?”
Her voice died away in a beautiful cadence as she concluded, and she
held out her hands as if in supplication. I am always sensitive to
female influences. Besides, what would Jorrocks’s ghost be to this?
Could anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself
to the chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews with such
creatures as my last visitor, unless I decided at once? She gave me a
seraphic smile, as if she knew what was passing in my mind. That smile
settled the matter. “She will do!” I cried; “I choose this one;” and
as, in my enthusiasm, I took a step toward her I passed over the magic
circle which had girdled me round.
“Argentine, we have been robbed!”
I had an indistinct consciousness of these words being spoken, or
rather screamed, in my ear a great number of times without my being
able to grasp their meaning. A violent throbbing in my head seemed
to adapt itself to their rhythm, and I closed my eyes to the lullaby
of “Robbed, robbed, robbed.” A vigorous shake caused me to open them
again, however, and the sight of Mrs. D’Odd in the scantiest of
costumes and most furious of tempers was sufficiently impressive to
recall all my scattered thoughts, and make me realize that I was lying
on my back on the floor, with my head among the ashes which had fallen
from last night’s fire, and a small glass phial in my hand.
I staggered to my feet, but felt so weak and giddy that I was compelled
to fall back into a chair. As my brain became clearer, stimulated by
the exclamations of Matilda, I began gradually to recollect the events
of the night. There was the door through which my supernatural visitors
had filed. There was the circle of chalk with the hieroglyphics round
the edge. There was the cigar-box and brandy-bottle which had been
honored by the attentions of Mr. Abrahams. But the seer himself--where
was he? and what was this open window with a rope running out of it!
And where, O where, was the pride of Goresthorpe Grange, the glorious
plate which was to have been the delectation of generations of D’Odds?
And why was Mrs. D. standing in the gray light of dawn, wringing her
hands and repeating her monotonous refrain? It was only very gradually
that my misty brain took these things in, and grasped the connection
between them.
Reader, I have never seen Mr. Abrahams since; I have never seen the
plate stamped with the resuscitated family crest; hardest of all, I
have never caught a glimpse of the melancholy spectre with the trailing
garments, nor do I expect that I ever shall. In fact my night’s
experiences have cured me of my mania for the supernatural, and quite
reconciled me to inhabiting the humdrum nineteenth-century edifice on
the outskirts of London which Mrs. D. has long had in her mind’s eye.
As to the explanation of all that occurred--that is a matter which is
open to several surmises. That Mr. Abrahams, the ghost-hunter, was
identical with Jemmy Wilson, _alias_ the Nottingham crackster, is
considered more than probable at Scotland Yard, and certainly the
description of that remarkable burglar tallied very well with the
appearance of my visitor. The small bag which I have described was
picked up in a neighboring field next day, and found to contain a
choice assortment of jemmies and centrebits. Footmarks deeply imprinted
in the mud on either side of the moat showed that an accomplice from
below had received the sack of precious metals which had been let down
through the open window. No doubt the pair of scoundrels, while looking
round for a job, had overheard Jack Brocket’s indiscreet inquiries, and
promptly availed themselves of the tempting opening.
And now as to my less substantial visitors, and the curious grotesque
vision which I had enjoyed--am I to lay it down to any real power over
occult matters possessed by my Nottingham friend? For a long time I
was doubtful upon the point, and eventually endeavored to solve it by
consulting a well-known analyst and medical man, sending him the few
drops of the so-called essence of Lucoptolycus which remained in my
phial. I append the letter which I received from him, only too happy to
have the opportunity of winding up my little narrative by the weighty
words of a man of learning:
“ARUNDEL STREET.